


When Your Ghosts Aren't Ghosts Anymore

by AidaRonan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Happy Ending, Kissing, M/M, Mostly Canon Compliant, because these two have suffered enough, but diverges after the end of winter soldier, hand holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 22:07:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14986607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AidaRonan/pseuds/AidaRonan
Summary: "Steve has been awake for three weeks and two days the first time he sees two men kissing on the sidewalk. It stops him in his tracks and all he can do is stare in shock, watching the way their hands twine beside them, the way they both break away with smiles on their lips.Smiles that quickly fade when they catch him looking. He should say something. Heck, he should just turn around and walk away and let them be. But he can’t.An image of a train and a snowy mountainside flash across his mind and all he can hear is screaming."





	When Your Ghosts Aren't Ghosts Anymore

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TooRational](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TooRational/gifts), [GabbyD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GabbyD/gifts), [AggressivelyBisexual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AggressivelyBisexual/gifts), [m0usielous1e](https://archiveofourown.org/users/m0usielous1e/gifts).



> My first Stucky fic, gifted to four wonderful friends willing to scream endlessly about the pavement slide with me.

Steve has been awake for three weeks and two days the first time he sees two men kissing on the sidewalk. It stops him in his tracks and all he can do is stare in shock, watching the way their hands twine beside them, the way they both break away with smiles on their lips.

Smiles that quickly fade when they catch him looking. He should say something. Heck, he should just turn around and walk away and let them be. But he can’t.

An image of a train and a snowy mountainside flash across his mind and all he can hear is screaming.

“What are you looking at?” The smaller of the two men has bowed himself up now, trying his best to make himself seem bigger and taller while his boyfriend mutters something like  _c’mon, it’s not worth it._

“Is this okay now?” Steve finally asks, and he realizes that it has to come out wrong. So wrong. But he wants to know. He  _has to_.

White and screeching and it’s so, so far down.

He’s met with confusion. Whatever they were expecting him to say, that wasn’t quite it. Next to him, some woman has her cell phone out, holding it up in the air. He knows what that is, has one in his pocket even—Fury insisted—and he sort of knows somewhere in his mind thats she’s recording this. Why?

“The fuck does that mean?” the smaller one asks.

“I didn’t mean...” He looks at them again, still holding hands even while one is shrinking away and the other looks ready to jump him. “Never mind.”

He finally does turn away after that, his eyebrows pulled tight together. He walks slowly back to the SHIELD field office, thinking about a dazzling smile and a million little moments that could have been something more if only they’d been born in a different time.

“I miss you, Buck,” Steve says softly. Seventy years don’t feel like any time at all.

That afternoon, he catches up on history. He’s had a few lessons already on things like the Cold War and the hole in the ozone, but he doesn’t care about any of that right now. Instead he reads about mafia-run speakeasies and “freaks” who finally got tired of being pushed around and said enough. Legal battles and moral ones. Willing soldiers turned away—that one hits close to home. Rainbow flags and painted sidewalks and acronyms.

There are so many words now. Back then, all he had was how he felt and a few vague terms people only used negatively. Now he has options.  

 _Lesbian, gay, bisexual-_  He stops there. The term fits him better than anything Howard Stark ever made. He picks up the label and adds it to all the others he’s made a choice to carry—soldier, leader, Captain. Unlike the others, this one actually feels more like a relief than a burden.

He still wishes he didn’t have to carry it alone. 

* * *

Steve dives back into work almost immediately. He runs missions for SHIELD after he finds out about Peggy. Maybe it’s the connection to his past that makes him agree when Fury invites him on board. Maybe it’s just that he can’t face a world he doesn’t recognize as Steve Rogers alone. Either way, he doesn’t take the time to mourn.

The closest he gets is a walkthrough of the Captain America exhibit at the Smithsonian. He ignores the massive posters of him, ignores the narrator constantly singing his praises and talking about him as a symbol of freedom. At the costume exhibit, he looks briefly at the star spangled uniform before letting his eyes settle on the one right next to it. His face is there on the banner too, fierce and alive.

“Best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable on both school yard and battlefield.” The narration goes on, all of the exhibits blending together when he lets them. And he swears there are needles in his heart as he stares at an etching of Bucky’s face.

There’s a video too of them laughing, of Bucky looking over at him, body and shoulders shaking.

The black and white film already looks old to Steve after just a few sharply colored moving pictures, but the memory is as vivid and fresh as an open wound.

Later, he listens to Sam’s group talk about their own ghosts. He wonders if that helps.

“Yeah, brother, we’ve all got the same problems,” Sam tells him. “Guilt, regret.”

“You lose someone?” Steve asks, the words out of his mouth before he can stop them.

Sam talks about watching Riley fall and he can see it in his eyes. He’d lost his own Bucky. He’d felt the hopelessness of watching him fall and not being able to stop it.

But Sam’s standing there in front of him, smiling easily. And Steve wonders if someday he’ll be able to do that again too. For now, he sticks to a forced grin—in his head he can hear Natasha tell him for the 50th time that he’s a terrible liar.

Sam asks him what makes him happy and Steve says he doesn’t know. The truth is he does know; he just doesn’t have it anymore.

* * *

The song filtering out through his apartment– _It’s_ _B_ _een a_ _L_ _ong,_ _L_ _ong_ _T_ _ime_  by Harry James. Bucky’s favorite, and for a second right before he remembers, he thinks…

* * *

Nat’s only teasing him; she doesn’t mean to wound.

But she does.

Jokes about his rusty kissing. And Steve’s not lying. He has kissed someone since the ice. If it was just Peggy’s forehead though, well, Nat doesn’t have to know that.

“Nobody special though?” Nat asks.

An ache in his chest and there’s the train again, ripped wide open just like he is.

Two men laughing in black and white.

“Believe it or not, it’s kinda hard to find someone with shared life experience,” Steve says.

And he’d think that you never know what you’ve got until it’s gone, but that wouldn’t be true at all.

He’d always known.

* * *

Sometimes in battle, Steve forgets. Natasha and Sam are great soldiers, but he finds himself looking back for him. A moment of eye contact, of confidence and faith and…

The mask drops to the pavement and the Winter Soldier turns to face him. Seventy years fall away like dust scattering in the wind.

Smiles and laughter, Steve small and beaten and broken, one hit away from having his ass handed to him, but then there’s-

“Bucky,” Steve says, everything inside of him falling to pieces and reassembling itself. But of the two of them, Steve’s the only one who knows him.

Confusion on both their faces and Sam saving Steve from the person he cares for most.

Then Rumlow’s there and Steve’s on his knees, and he should do something. Something to stop them from taking Nat and Sam, something to stop Hydra from winning, but he can’t breathe.

What do you do when the ghosts of your past aren’t ghosts anymore?

Bucky’s hands slip, and he’s falling, falling, falling into the snowy gorge.

Two men kissing on a sidewalk in New York. One small and blonde, the other brunette double his size. 

“Not here,” Rumlow says.

And he’s right.

* * *

They escape and make plans in a secret bunker, plans to end Hydra again, to shut down SHIELD.

And there’s no way around it. Steve will have to fight Bucky, the one person he’s never wanted to fight. Even when they were kids, they didn’t get into it. Scrappy as Steve was, he’d never had cause to lay a hand on him.

Until the bridge. Until he had no other choice.

“Who the hell is Bucky?” he’d asked, and all Steve could think was,  _everything_.

A small glimmer of hope in all of that, a moment where Steve thinks maybe Bucky actually saw him. It’s what he holds onto, fanning the small spark into something warm and glowing and _desperate_.

And when Sam tells him maybe he should stop the Winter Soldier, maybe he should end him, Steve knows he can’t.

“He doesn’t know you,” Sam says.

“He will.”

_He will._

* * *

Steve doesn’t have time to dwell on the sound of Bucky screaming at the snap of his arm. The sound pulses through every nerve in Steve’s body until his heart seems to burn with it, but he has to go. He has to stop Zola’s algorithm from ever being put into practice. But he makes a silent promise with every step.

I won’t leave you, Bucky. I won’t. Not again.

The Winter Soldier doesn’t stay down. Steve is bleeding and the searing pain in his abdomen is nothing compared to-

A train, two men, Bucky in a suit holding out a house key, dark hair and shining metal.

Even as he stands there as Steve’s sole adversary, Bucky still drives him to push those last few inches. Gasping, he tells Hill to do what needs to be done, and everything becomes fire and shrapnel.

And when Bucky screams in agony with the world crashing down around them, it’s like they’re right back there in the war, careening toward something that, for Bucky, never comes.

Steve won’t let it happen again. It takes every bit of strength he has to free him from where he's pinned, but he does it. He does it and there’s Bucky looking at him, and it’s the bridge all over again. Seventy years is a few weeks and a few weeks is seventy years.

Confusion, that same glimmer of hope that maybe...

“You know me,” Steve says.

“No, I don’t,” Bucky growls. He swings, and Steve goes down. He doesn’t fight back now though. He doesn’t need to, doesn’t have to, doesn’t want to. And if there’s one thing Steve Rogers can take, it’s a punch. It doesn’t stop—a parade of never ending fists and flesh and metal.

He surrenders and hopes and falls.

Water. Water and he’s in a plane sinking into the ice and there’s no point in fighting anymore. Water and everything is dark and cold and something tells him that he needs to open his eyes, move, swim—he has something to live for after all.

Two men kissing on a sidewalk. Metal twines delicately around pale fingers.

He’s moving through the water, no longer sinking but moving. There’s a pull on his shoulder, tugging and tugging and—air. He sucks in a breath and sputters on the edge of consciousness.

For one brief second, his eyes flutter open. Barely and nothing but slivers of reality get in.

Above him, there’s a glint of silver and then nothing.  

* * *

“Best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable on both school yard and battlefield.”

Steve blinks at the etching, at the summary of Bucky’s life next to it—a summary that no longer tells the truth. But then again, it’s no one’s truth to tell but Bucky’s.

The video is still there too, looping seconds of laughter that go on and on. Even if—when—he does get Bucky back, he’s not sure he’ll ever laugh like that again. He loses himself in it, in the carefree smile, in the seconds upon seconds of sepia joy.

Steve tenses at a hand invading the frame, a black glove stopping on Bucky’s face. Slowly, he turns and finds another man who doesn’t want to be seen. Another baseball cap. Layers of black hiding metal and muscle and scars.

Steve braces himself for a fight, because there are people here he’d have to protect even if it killed him to do it, but Bucky (is it Bucky?) meets his eyes and then slides them back down to the video.   
  
“Why?” he asks, his voice gruff.

Steve understands.

“The Johnsons’ cat. We were talking about the Johnsons’ cat.”

Quiet. Next to him, Bucky has his eyes wide open, his forehead scrunched into a dozen peaks and valleys.

“Thief,” he says, like he’s fighting for every word. “She—was a thief.”

“She was,” Steve says. “Your dog's bones kept going missing, and no one ever thought to suspect a cat. Then the Johnsons moved the bench on their front porch one spring and found a whole stash of 'em.”

Next to him Bucky sounds like he’s dying—a slow, painful death—like the air in his lungs is morphing into stone on the way out, cutting off his lungs and choking him.

“Steve,” he says, hand moving from one laughing face to the other. “I’m—sorry.”

“What for, Buck?” Steve asks. Eyes flick to his and away again. “We both know I let you win.”

One little pained note of laughter.

“Come home, Buck,” Steve says quietly, tentatively reaching for his shoulder. Bucky reacts immediately, metal hand reaching up to grab him roughly. If it was anyone else, every bone would probably be crushed. As it is, Steve grunts, his teeth gnashing together.

Bucky turns to him like he’s ready to throw a punch until he actually sees him. His body goes stiff, and he throws Steve’s hand away from him like it’s a live grenade.

“I don’t have a home,” he chokes out, and then he’s gone, disappearing into the crowd with all the ease of a trained expert.

* * *

Steve doesn’t go back to work. SHIELD is gone, but Fury still calls.   
  
“I have a more important mission right now,” Steve says.

“You better hope you complete that mission before anyone else does, Captain.”  

The museum visits become a daily occurrence. Steve practically lives there, stuck to the wall between the costume display and Bucky’s etching. Sometimes people recognize him and he has no choice but to slip away—frustrated because what if? What if that was the day?

It’s almost a month before he sees Bucky again. Another baseball cap. A red hoodie zipped up to his neck. A black glove hiding his hand.

He makes eye contact with Steve like he expected him to be there. A glance to the door then back at Steve. Steve follows, trailing him through rooms and wings until they reach one full of old pottery. No one is in there, and Bucky slides onto a bench against the wall.

“Can I?” Steve asks, nodding down at the bench. He’s had a lot of time to think about how stupid it was to touch him the first time around. Too soon, too selfish. Bucky nods, but Steve still keeps his distance when he sits down.

The space between them is either inches or miles apart.

Two men kissing on a sidewalk. It’ll have to wait. Steve can wait forever if he has to.

“How are you?” Steve asks.

“Tired.” The word seems to come easier, like he’s been practicing.

“Me too, pal,” Steve admits. “How are you-”

Bucky looks at him, a hint of his old friend flickering across his face. Like there's a teasing remark he can’t quite get off his tongue.

Didn’t you just ask me that? Are you getting forgetful in your old age, buddy?

But Steve can’t ask him what he wants to.

How are you surviving? How are you eating? Where are you sleeping? Are you sleeping at all?

“Come home, Buck,” Steve says again, this time a little more pleading.

Silence. A woman seems to float through the room in slow motion, looking at the exhibits in front of them without a glance in their direction. Time passes as it always has; neither of them mark it.

“Okay.” Bucky’s baseball cap tilts once toward the floor.

_Okay._

* * *

They never kiss on a sidewalk. They hold hands once on the Subway when a woman near them answers her cell phone with a string of Russian. Bucky starts fidgeting almost immediately, picking at his clothes and trembling. The only thing Steve can think to do is reach over, slowly so Bucky sees it coming. Even with a warning, Bucky still squeezes hard enough to send pinpricks up his arms, but Steve keeps his face blank. 

Whatever Bucky is feeling is worse. Besides, he can take it.

They never kiss on a sidewalk, but they do kiss. One night in the kitchen. They’re laughing like the old days, like Steve never thought they would again, side-splitting, raucous laughter. Bucky doubles over so hard he drops a plate, the whole thing shattering across the tile. He looks at Steve like he’s about to apologize and Steve cups his chin to stop him. Bucky doesn’t even need him to lean forward to figure it out. And Steve had every intention of asking, of at least raising his eyebrows, if they ever got to this. But Bucky falls into him like he’s been waiting forever.

Maybe he has.   
  
It’s taken years to get here, years of Bucky screaming in the middle of the night, of desperate late night phone calls to Sam.

“ _What do I do? I don’t know what to do.”_

But now Bucky laughs again. He calls Steve a punk and teases him about getting with the times like he's doing any better in that department. They kiss in the kitchen and the living room and in bed in the morning. And in the middle of the night after Bucky stills from a nightmare, after Steve reminds him where he is, who he is, sweeping sweat-damp hair aside.

There are still bad nights, but they aren’t never ending anymore.

A few times over the years, there are more calls from Fury. Steve says the same thing every time.

“I have a more important mission now.”

“Don’t think I don’t know, Captain,” Fury says.

If he does know, he never sends anyone after Bucky. Eventually the world forgets about James Buchanan Barnes just as they did the first time. Eventually it forgets about Steve Rogers too.

* * *

 

Two ghosts sitting on a bench in Brooklyn, staring at a place that used to be home.

“Remember when...”

“Remember when...”

“You always were a punk, Rogers.”  

“Yeah, well you were always a jerk.”

A flash of gold between them. Bucky hangs a ring on a chain around his neck while Steve slides one onto his finger. There are no vows, not really, just Bucky nodding at him and asking quietly,   
  
“Till the end of the line, pal?”

“Till the end of the line.”

It’s the closest they’ll get to official when one of them is a dead man.

It’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: BisexualStarBucky


End file.
